


So Much has Fallen (The Memento Mori Remix)

by sevendeadlyfun



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Remix Redux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 09:03:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4013806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevendeadlyfun/pseuds/sevendeadlyfun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The pull toward home brings him back every May. He’s never alone. He’s not the only Sunnydale kid who still dreams of home.</i> Xander lights a candle in memory of his hometown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Much has Fallen (The Memento Mori Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nothorse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothorse/gifts).
  * Inspired by [5 Scoobies Who Didn't Curse The Darkness And On Who Lit A Candle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9323) by [nothorse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothorse/pseuds/nothorse). 



> Many thanks to my beta for always working hard to add polish to my rough prose. Title taken from the poem [Absences](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/249188) by Donald Justice.

Even without the giant crater to mark the spot, he always knows when he’s home. It’s a bone-deep vibration, a resonance he doesn’t feel anywhere else on Earth. Sunnydale born and bred, he wonders if the Hellmouth leaves its marks inside and out.

If growing up on a font of mystical energy means you’re forever in need of it in order to feel whole, it’s no wonder he’s always on the go. _I just haven’t found the right Hellmouth to settle down with,_ he thinks, adjusting his eye patch. _Someday we’ll meet and it’ll be magic._

The pull toward home brings him back every May. He’s never alone. He’s not the only Sunnydale kid who still dreams of home.

Sometimes everyone comes, the whole Scooby gang, and it’s almost like a campout. They light fires and sleep by the rim of the town. This is still their home, Xander reminds them. Just – less home-like.

But apocalypses – apocalypti? They never did work out the plural – being what they are, sometimes only a few of them can make it. One year, he arrived a little late and found Spike and Andrew sitting at the edge of the crater, talking softly about their favorite fried foods. Every year is different. Every year is the same.

No matter who makes it back, "remember the time" starts a lot of sentences. Remember the time we almost blew up the mall? Remember the time at the Bronze when Cibo Matto played? Remember the time we had a town to live in? Xander doesn’t like it when the stories start getting darker.

Start talking about the town as if it were dead and it starts being dead. Sunnydale still exists, he maintains, and it exists because we keep it alive in our stories. He has no proof, no book of prophecies or ancient wisdom to back this up. He just knows that if you mourn a thing, that means it’s dead. Once dead, it’s gone forever

Sunnydale isn’t gone forever.

He’s the first one home this year and he sets up a little camp near the crater. Buffy and Willow were planning to come with him but a mystical convergence of the whowhatsits in the whatever dimension means they’ll be a bit late.  Or that’s what they said.

After the showdown at the Deeper Well, they might not show up at all. They’ve hugged it out but Buffy’s still giving him the cold shoulder. She’ll show, though. Being mad at him isn’t enough to make her miss their yearly meet-up. Probably.

As for everyone else, Dawn has finals and can’t make it. Mystical comas count as excused absences, even outside of Sunnydale, but she has a ton to make up. Spike refuses to leave Dawn unprotected these days in case she fades away again. Giles is doing whatever magically resurrected Watchers trapped in their 12 year old bodies do while mystical convergences are afoot and Faith is off doing something in Africa that seems both legally and ethically suspect but what does he know? Maybe working as a mercenary for a shady pharmaceutical company is just the thing an morally shaky Slayer needs to keep the blues away.

Angel never comes. Not enough fond memories, he says, to draw him back and enough bad ones to keep him away. 

So it could a long few days alone.

Xander settles down next to the hole that is his hometown. Stretched out on a sleeping back, he is comforted to see the stars exactly as he remember from his childhood. One thing no one tells you about traveling the world is how different the sky is all across the globe. The wide blue-black expanse and twinkling lights of his youth look different when seen from a campsite in Tanzania or a London rooftop. He misses the Sunnydale sky.

“Did I tell you I almost didn’t make it this year?” he says, eyes fixed on the lights above him. “Turns out that no matter how far away from home I go, I’m still capable of spectacularly bad choices.”

He rolls on to his side and scrabbles through the dusty backpack he still carries. The stitching is frayed and both straps have been reattached by super strong adhesive but it’s one of the few things he got out of Sunnydale, so he keeps it close. His hand closes over a long taper and he pulls the candle out of the depths of his old school bag.

“I almost forgot this,” he says, setting the candle carefully in its little holder. “I was in such a hurry to get on the road. I think I went back four times before I actually got everything really together.”

The rasp of the lighter breaks the silence, the cold scrape echoing across the crater. The spark finally catches light, a cheery red-orange flame dancing in night air. Xander leans down, touching the flame to the wick and watching in silence as it flares up.

“The only time I remember seeing candles like this,” he says, carrying the candle over to the town’s edge, “was when Gramma took me to church. No holiday, just a visit to church. I was five and I think it was the first time I’d ever been inside a church my whole life.”

He sits down on the edge, looking down in to the dark hole of his hometown. “43 churches in Sunnydale and I’d never really been inside one. Mom and Dad weren’t much for…well, they weren’t much.”

“It was the Mission del la Preciosa Sangre, down on 7th Street. It was so dark when we walked in, except there were all these candles lit up on the alter.” He stops and closes his eyes. “Gramma said the candles were for memory. She said anytime I wanted to remember someone, I should light a candle.”

The silence swallows up his words.

“Ooh, Giles was right. 43 churches is _a lot_ of churches.”

Xander tilts his head. It’s so weird that he can hear Buffy, like she’s right here with him.

“I don’t think we should interrupt. He’s got the candle out.”

Willow, too. Wow, it’s like the town is really coming alive again.

“End of the world situation kinda takes precedence. Xander.” A long pointy nail pokes him in the side. “You in there?”

“Gah!” His eyes fly open as he jumps, legs scrabbling backwards on the hard-packed dirt.

He stares up at Buffy and Willow. “Watch the pokey fingers of Doom.”

“Sorry,” Buffy says with a smile that looks very unsorry to him. “But we have a problem. A problematic problem that starts with me leaving you and Spike in charge of powerful magical items.”

“Oi!” The familiar lament echoes in the dark emptiness. “I’ll have you know I was watching it just fine. Andrew’s a wily little bugger these days. Also, Xander left.”

Xander glares in the direction of Spike’s voice. “YOU SAID go.  I ASKED. Your EXACT WORDS were…”

“No need to be quoting people,” Spike jumps in, moving into the circle of candlelight. “Plenty of blame to go around, why argue about it, eh?”

“Also,” Xander says, standing up, “Andrew?”

“Yes,” Buffy says. “Andrew. And we’ll leave how aggravating it is that he keeps pulling one over on me to another time.”

“We've tracked him here,” Willow tells him, floating slightly above the group and looking out on the remains on Sunnydale. “The magical signature leads directly…well, there.” She waves a hand straight down.

“So,” Buffy asks, “you ready to go home?”

He doesn’t know who said you can’t go home again. He doesn’t care. You take the boy out of Sunnydale, but home is home. Whether it falls into a pit of demonic energy or not, you can always go back.

Xander smiles. “Wouldn’t mind a look around the old place.”


End file.
